Roskilde 2011

Sunday

Coming into the final night of Roskilde, I've seen African funk, European electronic music, American hip-hop, psych, indie rock, metal, punk, cumbia, ambient music, and more. It strikes me that the scope of the Roskilde Festival, with its acts from all continents playing in all sorts of styles, mirrors the way most of us listen to music now. How many people reading this listen to only metal, or only punk, or only hip-hop? I'd venture to guess not many. We live in a time where music from all over the world is pretty much laid out on a platter for us to casually plunder, and without bothering to get into the moral-commercial dimensions of that fact, that means we're all becoming omnivores. Niche festivals are always going to have their place-- if you're an electronic music fanatic, you have to do Movement in Detroit at least once in your life-- but I think Roskilde does breadth and immense scale as well as anyone could.

Surfer Blood [Odeon; 2:30 p.m.]

The sun is out, and the mud is drying into ridges. Someone who sells wood chips got pretty wealthy overnight-- the festival volunteers have tried to cover the worst mud with them to make the grounds navigable again. It's a beautiful day today.

There are a lot of things I'd like to see playing at the same time, so I've decided to circulate a bit, catch partial sets, and sort of let the variety on the bill sink in. Watching Surfer Blood at Odeon made me think that I should have seen more Danish bands-- it felt sort of weird to come all the way to Roskilde to see a band from Florida.

They were good, though. They treated the audience to previews of songs from their upcoming EP, and I'm not sure what he was talking about, but John Paul Pitts opened his stage banter by saying he was glad to be out of jail. Later, I was looking away from the stage when the band suddenly stopped in the middle of a song, and Pitts said, "Wait a second. I didn't realize how high the stage was." When I looked back over, stage crew were helping him up to the stage-- he'd jumped off and couldn't get back on.

Over on Orange, Bad Religion had a huge crowd stretching pretty solidly to the grandstand, and I caught them playing "Punk Rock Song" while lots of people around me sang along, and when it was over, Greg Graffin told everyone to drink some water. The sun was shining directly onto the Orange Stage, and I imagine he must have been roasting up there in his black t-shirt.

Curren$y [Cosmopol; 4:00 p.m.]

Standing in front of me is a guy with a tank top, and the exact wording of his shirt is: "I've been on this fucking festival for every 41 years." Not perfect English, but the meaning is clear enough: he's been to every Roskilde Festival. There are a few people who have, and now and then I'll pass an old hippie and wonder whether he's one of them.

When they held the first Roskilde festival, the music that played at Cosmopol mid-day wasn't even a distant glimmer. As the crowd formed for Curren$y, Argentinean DJ Pedro Canale spun his Chancha Via Circuito set of modern digital cumbia from South America. This is interesting and exciting music, ripe for experimentation and cross-pollination. It got especially cool when three live drummers joined in for the last song he played.

Curren$y's was an all-weed-all-the-time set. The first thing he did was tell crowd that he didn't smell enough of it in the tent, and that if anyone threw a joint on stage, he be obliged to use it for its intended purpose. I'm a little surprised his contract rider didn't push his start time back to 4:20. It was a spartan presentation, but I love the way he puts a set together. He keeps the songs short-- five of them in the first 10 minutes-- and tends to finish each one out a cappella, segueing directly from song to stage banter and back and never allowing a beat to grow old. These a cappella breaks were uniformly awesome and showcased the fluid rapper he's become. And the banter was mostly golden. Dude's a funny guy and never runs out of different ways to talk about pot and its various recreational applications.

AfroCubism [Arena; 4:00 p.m.]

I had to get from Cosmopol to Gloria for Julianna Barwick at 5:00, so I split to get across the festival grounds, and on the way, I stopped at Arena for a couple songs by AfroCubism, a supergroup of Cuban and Malian musicians, including Toumani Diabate and Djelimady Tounkara. They had a big and very appreciative crowd and simply killed it on stage. One constant of the world acts I've seen here has been their utter professionalism and skill, and these guys had both. Tounkara's electric guitar solos were crystalline and liquid, and the band's rolling rhythms were perfect for a dusty afternoon.

Julianna Barwick [Gloria; 5:00 p.m.]

Gloria was an oven. I understand that this stage is a recent festival addition, and I think they're still figuring out how to work it. My first suggestion would be to improve its capacity for overflow (there's a big, enclosed area next to it with sand on the ground, some of which people were making into castles, and that would be a place to start. My other suggestion is better ventilation. People who clearly wanted to stay were leaving just to cool off.

For my part, I found myself wishing I had a hammock, because I would have loved to fall asleep to this music. And that is definitely a compliment. Barwick does the vocal looping, layering, and manipulation you hear on her records live, but also has some instrumental tracks to sing more conventional songs to. It was beautiful music and a joy to listen to, even if there wasn't much to see as far as the performance was concerned.

This was a really good day to take in music from all corners of the world. All you had to do was keep walking.

I walked to Cosmopol to catch a little of a set by Colombia's Anibal Velasquez. Velasquez is an accordion player who's been at this for something like 60 years, and he leads a superb band. Cosmopol was throbbing with the sounds of modern digital cumbia a few hours earlier-- this was the old stuff, with a big band, and Velasquez mixes in other styles as well, including mambo and guaracha. The crowds around the festival are generally less dense on Sunday, as people start trickling out early in the day, but he had a decent audience, especially for someone who was unknown in Europe until a release last year on Analog Africa.

At Odeon, Yemen Blues, a band led by an Israeli with Yemeni roots, also had a big crowd. I only got hear two songs, but I'll be investigating this band further when I get home. Their music was by turns dramatic and funky, and Ravid Kahalani has a powerful voice-- the microphone was basically a formality when he really let loose. He has strings and horns in his band, and blends Arabic classical music with funk, rock, and jazz to make something new, raw, and energetic. This is the kind of stuff you don't want to sleep on at a festival like Roskilde.

Gold Panda [Gloria; 7:00 p.m.]

Here, again, we encountered Gloria's overflow problems, but the crowd cleared enough during the set's first 15 minutes that everyone who was out the doors when it started got in. Gold Panda is another artist who has the limitations of his stage set-up to overcome in terms of making his show look interesting, but he seems really invested in the music while he plays, dancing and nodding, and bearing down during passages where the pressure builds.

I have to confess that I tend to like his music in short bursts but find it a little monotonous over long periods-- his basic tactic of layering light sounds over heavy beats is a good one but not something I have limitless patience for. But he structures a set well, crafting peaks and valleys and teasing the crowd with rhythms that aren't quite fit for dancing before taking off the reins and just giving them a big, thick beat to go crazy to.

Janelle Monáe [Cosmopol; 9:00 p.m.]

Last set. My throat is ragged from being around way too many cigarettes, I'm tired and a little sore, and I had a great time.

Janelle Monáe puts on a hell of a show. First, someone else comes up and whips the crowd into a frenzy, making them beg for her. She's learned a few things from James Brown about show business, that's for sure. Then, she emerges on stage to a full orchestral fanfare, clad in a jacketless suit and surrounded by a band and dancers dressed to the nines.

By this time, people are going nuts, and she has them in the palm of her hand. She covers "My Cherie Amour" and "I Want You Back" and everyone freaks. She ends the show with a double hit of "Cold War" into "Tightrope" (no appearance from Big Boi, though he performed earlier today at Arena, which I regrettably missed), with a big surprise blast of confetti in between. There are guitar solos, a horn section, backup singers, and synth strings. It's a fucking show. She does it right.

Of course she was coming back for an encore. The audience obeyed her every command, singing back her "la la la"s, sitting down and standing up... only Portishead and Ililta Band really compete with this for best set of the festival. So it's a good note go out on. I'll get another Squash (a great orange soda we should totally have in America) from the Turborg stand and leave. I'll be catching up on sleep for the next week.